Monster
by Darya
Summary: Grace struggles with her anger after Dimitri leaves, wondering who he really is and if she knew him at all(Dimitri friendly and more brooding than a Russian novel!)
1. grace

**hi everyone, I don't own these characters but I'm pretty sure they own me. I've never written fanfic before but I've written a lot about these characters. After reading this over I noticed it's kind of, uh, dark, but I promise things will look up-I just wanted to add in some good old fashioned teen angst, since I'm too old for it myself. Please please please review! Thanks.**  
  
The day Mr. Dimitri left, Grace stopped writing altogether. She wanted to spite him, mostly, for being a liar and a hypocrite, for pushing her to become more real and then shrinking away from reality, himself, when it proved too much to handle. But even if she wanted to write, she couldn't.  
  
The story he had written for her through the tiny gestures which no one had noticed but which had changed her life, couldn't be translated into a work of fiction. The Chekhov, the inscription, the way his face softened when he said "which doesn't mean I won't miss you," even the way he'd teased her on the first day of class, humiliating her in front of everyone and making her hate him. These things would all sound banal on the page; she didn't know how to show anyone where she had been without going back there, without getting lost.  
  
But one day when she came home from school there was a package on her desk, unopened. She unsealed it to find a set of plain white paper with green borders and matching envelopes along with a note scrawled on torn notebook paper: "Grace, I hope you know that you can still tell me anything, even if you can't say it. Judy"  
  
She snorted and threw the note in the trash. It had been weeks but everyone around her still felt it necessary to nurture her as if she had been recently widowed, even though these were the people who weren't even willing to accept that her relationship, or whatever they called it, was real, was important. To them, it was all fiction. She was a misled naïve child who had was so lonely that she'd clung to the first person who gave her the time of day. Mr. Dimitri, on the other hand, was a monster. That was all there was to it.  
  
But even though Grace had gone on with life as if nothing had changed, it seemed to her like people were never satisfied with the way you reacted to their actions. Did her mother expect her to suddenly turn into Jessie, to grow long blonde hair and act sweet and loveable now that she wasn't a nymphomaniac misfit who was possibly sleeping with her English teacher?  
  
She took the stationary and shoved it under the bed. Her mother called her to dinner and she sat at the table, listening to Jessie talk about her science project while Zoe stole all the carrots from Grace's plate and Lily just smiled like everything was perfect. Everything.  
  
But Grace knew that the whole time she was moving her fork around, flirting with the lettuce on her plate her mother was watching her, wondering if she was thinking about him, if she was wondering whether he was eating dinner alone, whether he liked iceberg lettuce or romaine, whether he was proud of himself for leaving or if he was in agony.  
  
The truth was, she had thought about these things many times, in the beginning. She had decided that he didn't like lettuce at all, that he ate alone in the dark, that he was miserable. She liked to imagine him bowled over in pain, suffering from food poisoning or the stomach flu. She hoped that every time he thought of how he'd left, he'd suddenly develop some painful ailment and spend the rest of the night praying to survive. She smiled every time she imagined this.  
  
But now every time she tried to conjure these solemn images, they would waver and fade and the only thing that remained was her memory of what he had said to her. She would wait for the familiar pain to make its way from her feet up to the space just above her stomach, below her ribs. Then when it was gone she would go upstairs, grab the pencil she had borrowed from him once and never returned and jam it into her thigh until she couldn't stand it any longer.  
  
That was the only way she could be sure that something was still living in her, was still hungry enough to go on. But she never cried anymore, and she never wrote a word. After all, what was the point? There was no one to listen now. 


	2. dimitri

The night Dimitri went home, after quitting his teaching job, he drank all of the wine he could find in his house. Slumped against the living room wall, he read Accidentally on Purpose, cringing at his adolescent self- pity, at his pretentious meditations on love that now looked as insightful as the notes his students passed around during class. "Cheryl, I've never felt this way about anyone before. Meet me in my van after Bio.-John" He kept seeing Grace's eyes as she pleaded him to wait, "is there a message in it?" her restraint when she asked him if she could still send him her story. He laughed to himself. For once she was showing restraint, and it was too late. He emptied the glass, poured another one, and attempt to think like a rational adult. It's over, he told himself, he was foolish but he'd finally done the right thing, just in time to keep himself from going to prison, from losing his license. No doubt Grace's parents saw him as a criminal, a middle-aged creep who lured their innocent daughter away from her safe, sanitary suburban life and into a seedy, lurid world. But he had made his own peace with what had happened, and it didn't matter how others distorted the facts, they could only see the distortions. But he had seen the truth broken open like an amethyst rock and he was certain that whatever consequences he would have to endure would be insignificant one day. Nothing would last but what remained in his memory. He closed his eyes and sighed, letting his body fall limp against the wine-stained carpet. Although his eyes were burning, and his shoulders still felt heavy where she had placed her hands when she'd kissed him, he was glad it was over. Because now it was in the past, and he could choose to remember it as he wished, leaving out the mundane details that everyone took so seriously, not knowing that they were grasping at the only things that meant nothing. 


	3. dimitri

The morning after, he woke up to find himself sprawled on the living room carpet with his book of poetry lying open on his face. When he remembered why he didn't have to get up for work a sharp pang of guilt hit him between his ribs and left him paralyzed. "But can I---can I still-can I send you my story, when I figure out the ending"? Figure out the ending figure out the ending figure out the ending. The words seemed to settle into a space just behind his eyes like bits of ash. I'm much too old for this, he thought, as he struggled to rise from the floor, his joints cracking painfully.  
  
In the bathroom he turned on the light to see his face glaring back at him in the mirror, pale and ghastly, smudged with black ink where the pages of his book had touched his skin. Looking more closely he made out the word "afraid" on his cheek with the letter "d" missing. He couldn't believe it, not even his life could be this cruelly ironic. Unable to move, he stood there and stared at his image for a good ten minutes. Then he began to laugh and laugh and laugh until he was clutching the edge of the sink with his hands, barely able to breath, eyes brimming with tears. As he walked out, he spotted something shiny by his foot. It was a small red-colored hair clip. She must have dropped it during one of their meetings and forgotten about it. He turned it around a few times in his fingers then put it away in his pocket and prepared himself to face the outside world again.  
  
The days after that got easier as he knew they would. He kept himself busy looking for jobs, contacting his old writer friends, researching fellowships he could apply to, reading the books he'd never had time to finish. At least a couple of times a week he forced himself to go out with old friends, though most of the people he knew were now married with children and didn't have time for the bohemian evenings they used to spend together when they were still in their twenties and would drink and smoke and read until their eyes blurred and they couldn't see straight.  
  
So he spent most of his nights sitting in his father's old chair in the living room with his notebook and an anthology of haiku in his lap, staring blankly at the phone. Eventually he started writing again-first recording his reflections on whatever came to mind or jotting down opening lines to stories or dialogue for a play. Then, slowly, whole poems emerged again, lengthy and awkward with words sticking out like bones from beneath skin. But they were still poems, and he was amazed at how innocent and harmless they looked on the page, these words he had avoided for nearly ten years, fearing their unwieldiness, their inadequacy would force him to admit that he was indeed a fraud.  
  
So he started writing wherever he went, at the post office while standing in line, little cafés he'd come across while running errands, bookstores where he listened to poetry readings, in his car during traffic jams. It was as if an elephant had been sleeping on his chest for ages and had now finally woken up and risen and made him free.  
  
As the weeks went by his years at Upton Sinclair began to fade from his memory. Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night with the image of Grace's eyes stuck in his mind like a forgotten photograph. And once, while doing laundry he'd found her barrette again and almost reached for the phone to call her. But he didn't feel as guilty anymore and the more he thought about what had happened the more he understood that he had done the right thing by leaving.  
  
For a long time, perhaps for most of his teaching career, he'd been afraid of facing a world where people would demand more from him, from his art, where women would come to him with an armful of heavy expectations that he'd constantly have to dodge, like Sisyphus running from the boulder. So whether it was intentional or simply an unconscious pull, he'd found himself drawn to Grace, who was even more unsure of herself than he was, who was ashamed of her passion and afraid of some force in herself which she didn't yet understand, but which he recognized and wanted her to see, too. But afterwards, when the play was over, when they both saw what he knew was hidden in her-that's when he should have stepped back.  
  
Instead--being afraid, being perhaps bored with himself, he had kept her nearer than he should have without admitting to himself what he was doing. And then, that night in the kitchen after she had left him standing there with his entire body awake for the first time in years, he realized that he had led both of them to the edge. And he knew he couldn't let her fall in with him because she still had too much to offer. So he left. And that was the end of it. The end. Or so he thought. 


	4. grace

***Hi everyone, thanks again for reading my story. Please let me know if my sentences are too convoluted-I tried to be as clear as possible, but there was too much going on in my head! Anyway, enjoy this chapter. More is definitely on the way (I couldn't stop now if I wanted to).***  
  
"Distance has no way of making love understandable"--Wilco  
  
Grace woke up with a piece of Judy's stationary stuck to the side of her face. She peeled it off, groaning, and rose from her bed. Last night she'd torn up all of the acid free paper and the elegantly flowered envelopes into pieces and stuffed them into a plastic bag. But one sheet had escaped the massacre unharmed and found its way into her bed. She was about to throw it away when she suddenly remembered him saying, "You don't have to be the bravest person who ever lived, just the bravest writer."  
  
That was back when he was still just another quirky, arrogant adult whom she was forced to tolerate. He said he thought about Emily Dickinson and Proust. How they were too afraid to leave their rooms. And now she was standing in her own room, terrified of a piece of paper. She groaned, angry that he still monopolized her thoughts and that in the end she always decided that he was right.  
  
But in spite of herself, she put the last piece of the stationary on her desk and smoothed it out. She took his pencil out of her desk drawer and placed it next to the paper. Then she got ready for school.  
  
Downstairs, Zoe sprayed whipped cream on her waffles as Lily frantically made her a bologna sandwich, the ends of her hair covered in mustard. Jessie was sitting at the table, eating strawberry yogurt in small spoonfuls, her head buried in the morning paper.  
  
"Hi, Gracie" her mom chirped. She wore the same glowing smile that she had every morning, no matter what was going on in their lives. It always infuriated Grace. She almost missed the days when her dad first moved out and her mother would lie in bed in her robe all day and stare at the walls absent-mindedly. At least then she'd been able to relate to her. She mumbled a hi and sat next to Jessie with a bowl of cereal. Jessie's eyes were still glued to the paper. "Oh my God" Jessie whispered, her eyes widening.  
  
Grace turned and looked at her, "What are you reading?" she asked.  
  
Jessie looked up, startled. "What?"  
  
"The paper," Grace said, laughing at Jessie's dazed expression. She was so weird.  
  
"Oh!" she tucked the paper under the table. "Nothing," she smiled. "It's just the weather-they say it's going to rain like all next week."  
  
"Oh, thank God" Grace said, but she still felt weird. Why would Jessie be shocked about the weather? She shook her head, everything in their house was always so much more complicated than it had to be.  
  
After breakfast, they said goodbye to Lily, grabbed their lunches and headed for the door. As she was putting on her coat, Grace noticed Jessie grab the paper and stuff it into her backpack. Grace watched her, suddenly suspicious, and followed her out to the car.  
  
On the way to school it was silent except for the sound of the rain outside. Grace could sense Jessie watching her, but as soon as Grace glanced in her direction, she turned away. Grace wished that for once Jessie would say what she was thinking, but Jessie, unlike Grace, rarely said anything she didn't have to.  
  
Remembering the weird incident with the paper, Grace looked at Jessie, trying to read her face. Jessie just stared through the window.  
  
"What were you really reading in the paper?" Grace asked her.  
  
"What?"  
  
"The paper, at breakfast when you said you were reading about the weather?"  
  
"What about it?"  
  
Grace sighed impatiently. "So what were you really reading?"  
  
"I really was reading about the weather."  
  
"Jessie!" Grace glared at her until she could no longer feign innocence. She sighed and took the paper out from under her arm.  
  
"Are you sure you want to know?"  
  
Grace felt a pang of doubt in her stomach. "Yes, tell me." She swallowed.  
  
"Well..I was just looking at this calendar of arts events and.."  
  
"And?" Grace's hands tightened around the steering wheel.  
  
"And.it says that there's going to be this..uh, poetry reading tomorrow."  
  
"And?" She heard the sound of an oncoming train in her head.  
  
"And that's it."  
  
"And?!" The train was moving faster and with more force.  
  
"So. " Jessie turned away again, nervously fiddling with her hair.  
  
"Jessie!!"  
  
"Okay, okay!" she put her hands up, afraid Grace might strike her. "I'll just read it."  
  
Grace could feel her throat starting to close as Jessie turned to the arts page and cleared her throat.  
  
"The reading will feature new work by local poets Angela Chase and" she paused and lowering her voice, added "and. August Dimitri."  
  
Grace sank into her seat. In her head, two trains crashed into each other head-on. She could hear the sound of metal against metal, brakes squealing. She put her hand against her forehead as if she could quiet it. "Oh," she said softly, "you could have told me that."  
  
"I know."  
  
"I mean it's not like it's a big deal or anything."  
  
"I know."  
  
"I mean, maybe it was, at one time, but that was a really long time ago."  
  
"I know"  
  
"It's not like I still.like think about..any of that anymore or.. anything."  
  
"I know, I'm sorry, I just wasn't sure if it would be weird.."  
  
"I know you and Mom and everyone think that I'm like still upset about this..but I'm not"  
  
"Okay."  
  
"Just so you know."  
  
"Okay."  
  
"So don't feel like you have to protect me or something."  
  
"Alright, I won't, geez."  
  
"Okay then."  
  
Silence fell between them like a curtain.  
  
"So.are you going to go?" Jessie asked carefully.  
  
Grace glared at her.  
  
"Sorry," Jessie said, "Sorry..I'll just shut up now."  
  
They drove the rest of the way in silence while Jessie stared at her lap and Grace used all of her will-power to hold back the thoughts that were swarming in her head like tiny mosquitos.  
  
For the rest of the day, Grace felt like she felt like she was living under water. Everyone looked distorted-their heads were too big for their bodies, their lips moved really slowly when they talked and she barely heard what they were saying. Cynthia sat next to her at lunch, telling her about the party she was throwing for all the drama people but Grace just smiled without listening and played with her fingers. "Are you okay?" Cynthia asked.  
  
Grace's head shot up, "Yeah" she laughed. "Are you sure?"  
  
"Yes!" she insisted, "I'm fine, I just..didn't get enough sleep last night, that's all."  
  
"Oh God I know what you mean, I was up all night studying for that stupid math test. I hate seriously hate my teachers, they're such sadists." She laughed.  
  
Grace smiled and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Yeah, I know."  
  
That night, when everyone had gone to sleep, Grace sat at her desk, chewing on her nails and staring at the blank page in front of her. When she had stared at it so long that she was sure flames would start shooting from her eyes, she turned it over.  
  
She took out her Chekhov book from its place beneath her mattress, opening it to "On Love." Eyes closed, she ran her fingers over the words, feeling like she could channel him through the Chekhov-the way she had when she first read the story, each word stinging as if he were standing there injecting them into her with a syringe.  
  
But paper was a poor substitute for skin, for the feel of hair brushing against her cheek. Her fingers ached and she placed her head on her desk, her face resting against the stationary, eyes closed. For a second she thought she heard someone whisper her name--she could feel his breath against her cheek. But when she opened her eyes, the room was dark and she was alone.  
  
Disappointed, she reached for her letter opener and held the sharp side against the inside of her arm, the coolness of the metal calming her. She had promised herself that, whatever happened, she wouldn't let herself care about what he was doing or where he was. She had decided it would be best to remember things as they had been, and just keep it that way. She didn't want to ruin what she already had by wanting more. But she always wanted more, she couldn't help it.  
  
She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed the letter opener against her flesh, craving the sharp pain that would follow if she just pressed a little harder. But she couldn't go further. Instead, she put it back in the drawer and reached for the pencil. Slowly, without knowing what she was doing, she moved her hand across the page until the words "Dear Mr. Dimitri" were there on the paper, looking much smaller than she'd imagined they would.  
  
Exhausted, she stopped and let the pencil fall to the floor. She put her head back onto the desk and fell asleep with her fingers spread out over his name, her head resting against the spine of the book he'd once held in his hands, had once written in. 


	5. dimitri

His poetry reading was tonight. It was in his datebook, on his calendar, even in the paper, and he could therefore no longer avoid thinking about it. Three new poems had been published in a literary journal and now he was to read them in front of an audience (albeit a small one) for National Poetry Month, a label which he found even more depressing than the scantily stocked poetry shelves at the nearby mainstream bookstores.  
  
But to justify his decision to commit to writing full time and thus keep himself from lying in bed till the late afternoon every day, he'd agreed to read when a friend of his had asked him as a favor. And now, after months of traveling across the country, living on his savings as well as the money he occasionally made writing travel articles, and writing poetry in the middle of the night in abandoned motels in the southwest, he was finally exposing himself, his words. His own words--unhinged from the page and floating freely. At this thought, he felt the room begin to spin and had to steady himself against the door.  
  
It wasn't that he was afraid to speak in front of a group; teaching had cured him of his shyness. But the idea of releasing his thoughts into the air so that they were no longer his, but everyone's and subject to examination, to interpretation, to scrutiny made him shudder. It was different from publication. Publication was static, tame. Readings meant interacting with his words and with the audience at the same time. It meant contact.  
  
He'd recoiled from contact for so long that he didn't even know if he was physically capable of giving something of himself that was real, that was naked, to another person. And since the last time he'd done this had turned out so well, he thought sarcastically-(the memory of Grace's lips against his still quickening his breath after a year)--he wasn't eager to try again, even though he'd originally seen it as the next step in his quest to redeem himself, to prove that he was not a complete fraud.  
  
Chris had unfortunately read about the reading in the paper and she and her fiancé were coming. She'd insisted that the three of them were go out to dinner afterwards and she sounded so genuinely happy for him that he couldn't refuse. But the idea of seeing Chris again made him more nervous than the thought of reading his poetry. He had told her about his "retirement" only two weeks after he'd left and the sound of her voice on the telephone, the way she'd said "Ohh" as if she weren't entirely surprised, had haunted him ever since.  
  
Although she hadn't questioned him when he said that he'd left teaching to devote more time to his writing, her distant tone made him wonder how much she knew. After all, she had been there that night when Grace had practically exploded into his kitchen and he'd awkwardly turned her away. She'd been the only person from his past to witness him with Grace. Had she possibly noticed something between them then that even he didn't yet see? If she did, she'd kept it to herself. Chris never said anything about Grace's sudden intrusion on their evening together except "so you're students must really like you, huh?" "Yes well, some.more than others" he'd replied, attempting to laugh it all off.  
  
But he still had to pretend to look for a book in his bedroom so that he could get away long enough to temporarily stop his mind from reeling. In his room, he tore his black and white picture of Nabakov from the wall and threw it away. This was , he thought, sitting on the edge of his bed and taking deep breaths. He couldn't avoid talking about this to Grace any longer. But what exactly "this" meant he didn't know and he suspected that Grace didn't either.  
  
Still, he knew he had to figure out a way to talk to her without making her hate him or hurting her by making her think he didn't care or worse yet-- drawing her still closer to him. Looking back on it now, he laughed bitterly at his wasted efforts. But he'd tried. Hadn't he?  
  
He sighed as he walked out of his door to get the mail. Even if Chris knew nothing about "Chekov-gate" as he jokingly called the whole sordid ordeal to detract from his anger, he knew that she would still irritate him with her looks of concern and her incessant advice.  
  
"August," she'd said to him a few days after their initial conversation, "Not to meddle in your life, but are you sure this is the right thing to do.I mean, you already seem so."  
  
"So what? How do I seem?" he'd snapped at her, his anger burning unbearably in his chest.  
  
There was a pause on the phone. "So..I don't know. Isolated, I guess."  
  
He laughed. "Don't worry Chris," he'd assured her, "I've already survived the obligatory periods of disillusionment and despair that most mediocre writers go through. I'm invincible now."  
  
Her silence had told him that she didn't really believe him. And the pain behind his eyes had made him realize that he didn't believe himself, either. Now, as he sorted through his mail and found a light green envelope marked with nothing but his name written on it in unmistakably familiar handwriting, the hair that rose on the back of his neck assured him that he was definitely a liar. 


	6. grace

**Hello my patient readers. Please accept my deepest apologies for the long wait. Also, I apologize in advance for the unevenness of the next few installments of this story. I have a practically non-existent attention span when it comes to writing and am always rearranging things-so please let me know if something is missing or seems out of place. As always, I love feedback so feed away. Thanks!**  
  
Grace sat on the edge of the bathtub and held her hands over her ears to block out Jessie's voice from outside. "Come on Grace," she pleaded, knocking on the door "Will you please let me in?" "Go away!" Grace yelled, wishing Jessie would fracture her fragile hand on the door and leave her alone. "I'm sorry, Grace, how many times do I have to say it before you believe me?" "None, because I never will!" Jessie groaned. "I told you it was an accident, it just slipped out! I never meant to say anything." Grace got up from the bathtub and threw open the bathroom door. Jessie stood looking at her desperately, her face streaked with tears. But Grace felt no sympathy for Jessie this time; instead she glared at her with the cruelest look she could manage and said "Well what if I just accidentally told your dad the real reason you spend so much time at Katie's house?" The sadness in Jessie's eyes turned to hatred. "You wouldn't!" "Wouldn't I?" They stared each other in silence for several seconds, each waiting for the other to back down. Neither dared to breath until Zoe came running up the stairs and toward the bathroom. "What's going on?" she asked, wrinkling her nose. Jessie turned and ran up to the attic and Grace went to her room and slammed the door, her jaw and her fists both clenched in fury. She grabbed her Chekov book from the dresser and threw it against the wall, watching it fall face down onto a pile of laundry. She could hear Jessie sobbing upstairs and for a minute her face softened. She knew it wasn't really Jessie's fault that Lily had followed her to Mr. Dimitri's house; her mom would've found out one way or another, without Jessie's help. Still, she didn't think Jessie would mention the poetry reading to anyone, least of all Lily. But she had to admit to herself that she wasn't really angry at Jessie at all. What really infuriated her was that her mom didn't trust her enough to think she wouldn't go after Mr. Dimitri after all this time just because Jessie happened to say that he would be reading his poetry at a bookstore later that night. Lily hadn't thought twice about it, as if to make up for all of her past negligence in one fell swoop. She grabbed her coat and Rick's car keys and was out the door before Jessie could do anything to stop her.  
  
And the worst part for Grace wasn't that she was in trouble again but that she was in trouble for no reason. She'd been a coward, had left him a letter that wasn't even a letter and driven off before he could figure out she was there, and now she wasn't allowed to leave the house unsupervised for three weeks. She laughed bitterly to herself. She felt like her life had become a perpetual joke without a punch-line-and all because she'd been trying to do the right thing, to get a sense of closure. "You've been seeing him all along, haven't you?" Lily had asked her in the garage when they both got back.  
  
"What?!" Grace had exclaimed, almost laughing. "How can you say that after.after everything?"  
  
"Just answer me, Grace."  
  
Grace looked at Lily quietly for a moment. Lily's face had grown longer, more sallow after the miscarriage; she looked so tired, almost on the brink of surrendering. Grace felt a pang of pity for her, suddenly. "No, Mom" she said softly, looking away. "I haven't." Lily put a hand on Grace's shoulder and tucked her hair behind her ear. She sighed. "Look, Gracie."  
  
Grace cringed. She hadn't heard that name in ages. The words "Don't be Gracie, be in a state of Grace" flitted involuntarily through her mind. She had stopped fighting them, just let the ghosts pass through as they wished.  
  
"I know it's been a tough time for everyone, and I know this year has been hard on you especially-"  
  
"Mom-"  
  
"I mean, I know you must miss-"  
  
Grace put her hands up, her face growing hot. "Mom please. I don't miss.anybody." She pulled off her scarf, looked at it. "I just..had to do something, you know, for..closure or something." Lily smiled faintly and sighed. "Alright, I'm sorry..I don't mean to be so.suspicious. This isn't me!" "I know, Mom. But I just.." "It's just, Gracie-you can't just leave like that without telling anyone." "I know, but I really need-" "I mean, I had no idea where you were or what you were doing and lately you've been so quiet--" "Mom--" "It's like no one knows where you are even when you're here and sometimes-" "Mom!" Lily broke out of her trance and finally turned to look at Grace. "I just..need you to trust me, okay?" Lily was silent. "Please?" "Just tell me one thing." "What?" "That letter-was that-I mean-what I mean to say is-" She ran her fingers through her hair, placed her hands on her temples as if to hold her mind in one place. "I just-thought all of that was behind us and now you're going to his house and-" Grace looked at the door, longing for escape. "I mean-how am I supposed to trust you?" "I guess..by knowing that I know better than I did a year ago." "But do you?" "Yeah. Yeah I do." "Because you're almost eighteen now and I can't tell you-" Oh god no no no, Grace thought, frantically searching for ways to steer the conversation in a different direction. This couldn't be happening, not now. "Mom, please" she headed for the door. "Gracie! We have to talk about this!" "No. We don't." She put her hands over her ears and ran into the house, imagining him sitting on the recliner in the living room, smiling knowingly at her, as always amused. 


	7. dimitri

"Dear Mr. Dimitri---"  
  
He turned the paper over a few times as if expecting more words to appear on the page from some hidden place. But even these three words alone had made his palms begin to sweat. He felt a chill down his spine at the thought of reentering that period of his life after so long, off how it could begin again as subtly as it had the last time. For he was standing alone on his driveway holding a piece of cheap stationary paper, blank but for three words and a torn envelope and yet he felt like he was holding his crate of old books and school papers from Upton Sinclair and standing in his classroom again, trapped between Grace's pleading face and Lily Sammler's stern look of disapproval.  
  
He tore the letter up angrily and stuffed it into the mailbox. He walked back into the house, threw his jacket on the couch and grabbed the phone from the kitchen. He dialed his friend Gary's number to tell him he couldn't make it to the reading but no one answered. He dialed Chris's number but she wasn't there either. He left her a message saying he'd caught the flu and wouldn't be able to meet up with her that night. Then he unhooked his phone, grabbed his last bottle of wine from the refrigerator, found his copy of "The Bicycle Thief" under a pile of newspapers and headed to his bedroom.  
  
Grace sat on the edge of the bathtub and held her hands over her ears to block out Jessie's voice from outside. "Come on Grace," she pleaded, knocking on the door "Will you please let me in?" "Go away!" Grace yelled, wishing Jessie would fracture her fragile hand on the door and leave her alone. "I'm sorry, Grace, how many times do I have to say it before you believe me?" "None, because I never will!" Jessie groaned. "I told you it was an accident, it just slipped out! I never meant to say anything." Grace got up from the bathtub and threw open the bathroom door. Jessie stood looking at her desperately, her face streaked with tears. But Grace felt no sympathy for Jessie this time; instead she glared at her with the cruelest look she could manage and said "Well what if I just accidentally told your dad the real reason you spend so much time at Katie's house?" The sadness in Jessie's eyes turned to hatred. "You wouldn't!" "Wouldn't I?" They stared each other in silence for several seconds, each waiting for the other to back down. Neither dared to breath until Zoe walked up to them and told Grace she had to pee. Jessie turned and ran up to the attic as Grace went to her room and slammed the door, her jaw and her fists both clenched in fury. She grabbed her Chekov book from the dresser and threw it against the wall, watching it fall face down onto a pile of laundry. She could hear Jessie sobbing upstairs and for a minute her face softened. She knew it wasn't really Jessie's fault that Lily had followed her to Mr. Dimitri's house; her mom would've found out one way or another, without Jessie's help. Still, she didn't think Jessie would mention the poetry reading to anyone, least of all Lily. But what really infuriated her was that her mom didn't trust her enough to think she wouldn't go after Mr. Dimitri after all this time just because Jessie happened to say that he would be reading his poetry at a bookstore later that night. And the worst part was that she was in trouble now again and for no reason. She'd been a coward, had left him a letter that wasn't even a letter and driven off before he could figure out she was there, and now she wasn't allowed to leave the house unsupervised for three weeks. 


	8. grace

The more she tried to let go of what had happened last year the more impossible it became. Though she thought about it constantly, she couldn't figure out why it had become so difficult for her to forget when it had been so simple to shut her mind off to unwanted memories in the beginning. She knew she shouldn't have left the so-called letter in his box.She had known that even one small gesture would be a betrayal of the promise she'd made to herself, the promise to honor his decision and leave him alone despite her anger.  
  
But the notice in the newspaper had confused her.Why would he still be living in the same place if he'd wanted so badly to distance himself from his past? Why would he let his whereabouts be known so publicly? She'd assumed that he was long gone and had already begun a new life for himself in some other city.  
  
And until she'd seen his name in print, she hadn't known how hungry she was for his friendship. It was this she regretted the most. She'd often lose herself in a frenzy of thoughts and questions over why she hadn't realized that she would lose one of the most important friendships she'd ever made.Why she'd been so naive that she'd risked everything for something that she knew, unconsciously at least, would never happen and which was less important anyway,in the end, than what she already had.  
  
Now that the hunger was back, it was the only thing she felt through her numbness. She found herself making up long conversations with him in her head during class. She wouldn't even notice it until she would think of something funny he might say and laugh out loud and everyone would turn to look at her. She had spent the year alone,except for when she occasionally hung out with Jessie and Katie.  
  
Initially, she thought that this was the source of her loneliness-that she merely missed being seen, by anyone-not by any particular person. She buried herself in more activities, just as she'd done before.But she felt even more empty than she had in the beginning.More and more she was aware that this time,there was no going back.  
  
Except for the three hours before she got up to get ready for school, she'd stopped sleeping altogether. She would say goodnight to her mom, close her door and sit at her desk, typing essays and assignments and articles on the computer all night long until her life was reduced to watching strings of words move across the screen and her mind became empty. Sometimes the sound of her nails clicking against the keys would enter her dreams and she'd think she was awake.  
  
Once she'd dreamed that she was sitting in his living room again, and he was reading the latest draft of her story, massaging his temples with his hands.He had a ring on his left ring finger which she'd never noticed before.She put her hand out to touch it and without looking up he grabbed her wrist suddenly. She gasped and tried to pull her hand away, muttering "I'm sorry..I don't know why I did that," but he wouldn't let go of her wrist. He turned her hand over and saw the faint red scratchmarks on the inside of her arm.  
  
He looked up at her then, his eyes dark with anger."Why did you do this?" he demanded. But before she could say anything his eyes softened and he lowered his lips to her arm, kissing each scar, his hair tickling her wrist so that she woke up laughing.  
  
It had been two weeks since the fight with Jessie. Her mother had decided not to ground her after all but threatened to lock her in her room and never open the door if Grace ever went to his house again Grace quickly agreed to everything her mother asked just to get her to stop talking about him with that haughty, self-righteous look on her face  
  
.She and Jessie were on good terms again even though they avoided each other most of the time when they were both in the house. Jessie had been spending more and more time at Katie's house lately, anyway, so Grace rarely saw her. Plus, the end of the Spring semester was near and she found herself buried in an endless pile of math assignments, bio labs, English essays and stories for creative writing class. Her new teacher,MissAlexy, stuck yellow smiley face stickers on every one of her stories and wrote the words "wonderful work!" at the bottom.  
  
Grace spent much of the class time chewing on the end of her pencil and wondering what she wanted to do with her life. She'd already received notices from all of the schools she had applied to and had all but decided to attend Northwestern. She had a week to decide for sure. She had also decided on double-majoring in English and Theater, though lately she doubted her talents in both areas.  
  
Her stories sounded flat and artificial when she read them aloud to herself no matter how many times she revised them.After a while she started turning in stories she'd written in the years before; she just didn't care about words or fictional characters anymore  
  
.As for theater, it had been such a long time since she'd been part of a production that she could only vaguely remember her former excitement over acting the lead part in a play. The spring semester production for that year had been cancelled because the drama teacher had broken both legs in a rock climbing accident and the school couldn't find anyone to replace her in time.And in the semester before it she didn't even bother auditioning- she couldn't stand the thought of walking into that theater again-with Alexa as stage manager.She could see herself standing on stage and watching the self-assured smirk on Alexa's smug face down below.  
  
At the beginning of the year, she had considered spreading a rumor about Alexa. She planned on telling everyone that Alexa had tried to seduce Mr. Dimitri and when he'd laughed at her she vowed to get revenge. So when she found out that he and Grace were spending so much time working on the GSA together, she'd framed the two of them in a jealous rage.Grace had gone as far as writing all of this down on a sticky note pad and putting it into her pocket on the first day of school. But when she was walking down the hall again, the sight of his classroom door released an unexpected stream of pain from her chest out to her arms, and she ripped up the note and threw into the trash on her way to her first class. 


	9. dimitri

After he cancelled his poetry reading, Dimitri spent three days at home in his room, scribbling down limericks and pieces of poems and singing along to his Linda Ronstadt albums. His room was cluttered with empty glass bottles and the papers he'd kept from his days at Upton Sinclair. He took them out of the filing cabinet for the first time since he quit his job. He didn't think he would ever look at them again but every time he went to throw them away he felt overwhelmed with guilt.  
  
Now he was determined to finish all the work he'd left incomplete and to finally get rid of it. He hoped this would give him enough sanity to start searching for something new to move on to, something substantial. He lay on his stomach on his bed, his green silk robe half-open, reading the stories from last year that he never finished grading.  
  
He scoffed as he scoured his students' cliches, their tired adolescent characters. A pile of manila folders lay open on the floor, revealing stacks of papers covered in red ink. He read and edited the stories hungrily, feeling useful for the first time in weeks. He finally fell asleep at 4 a.m. on the fourth day and woke up with papers stuck to the side of his face. He rolled over and fell onto the floor. The burn of the carpet against his skin gave him a small thrill and he used the energy to turn and push himself off the floor and walked unsteadily to the bathroom. He forced himself to look in the mirror again.  
  
He lifted his head slowly, blinked at his image. Without his contact lenses in, his face looked like a copper-colored cloud. The spaces beneath his eyes were nearly black. His hair, which he hadn't washed in more than a week was stuck to his head, except for a few strands in the front, which stuck straight out. The beginnings of a beard had sprouted across his chin. He looked like someone had just dug him out of a grave.  
  
He took off the robe, stood under the shower head and stared at the levers of the faucet. Hot. Cold. Everything was split into dichotomies. Was it so hard to come up with a knob that turned on warm water automatically? He laughed angrily as he turned the hot water as far as it would go and stood under the water, his teeth clenched in agony, until his skin was as red as his hair.  
  
Afterwards he went back to the bed and lay naked on the sheets and, soothed by the soft, cool surface of the cloth, he drifted asleep with a sense of certainty growing in his mind until he could almost feel his life take shape into a tangible object he could rest his head against. By the time he woke up, he knew what he wanted and for once was not embarassed to admit that he thought his desires important enough to care about and perhaps even worthy of pursuing.  
  
When he got dressed he gathered the graded papers together and stuffed them into his brief case. His hair was still wet and was dampening the shoulders of his brown blazer but he didn't care. He grabbed a couple of books of poetry from his bookshelf before heading for the door. As he was fumbling with his keys outside, however, he hesitated a moment then went back inside.  
  
He dug through a pile of books and papers lying under the kitchen table until he found the three-word letter and the old copy of Grace's story he had-the one for which she'd made up a shabby ending just as an excuse to see him again. He laughed to himself as he thought about how similar the two of them were. It terrified him. 


	10. dimitri

***hello again my dear patient readers. Thanks so much for your warm praise- I don't deserve it but will gladly take it anyway. I've been busy with school, reading 'Henry IV' of all things-but your kind comments brought me back. Hope you enjoy. More will follow soon.***  
  
When he drove into the parking lot of Upton Sinclair, he felt a stab of regret mixed with shame at the sight of his old parking space---the one beneath the oak tree that grew outside of the biology lab. He remembered the faint smell of chemicals which drifted out from beneath the door and which always filled him with the slightest feeling of jealousy. Mr. Russell, the Biology teacher, would smirk at him whenever Dimitri walked by, as if to say 'Don't think, for a minute, that anyone will ever take you seriously.' He hadn't thought it bothered him much, considering his own dread of science and math and his refusal to be defeated by those who thought literature less important or useful than other disciplines.  
  
But after he left the school he began to wonder whether he would have ever found himself in the same position-chastised at a board meeting where no one was sure of what had occurred--had he been a physics teacher who took a student to the observatory. Probably not, he thought to himself.  
  
He sat in his car with the envelope of papers sitting on his lap like a stretched-out cat. He traced the letters he had scrawled earlier with his index finger, starting at the top of the G where he could see the point where he'd first pressed the black felt pen and not stopping until the very last point of the e which he'd written in one motion of his wrist, the tail pointing upward with uncertainty, as if wondering whether another letter would follow.  
  
The same way Grace had looked at him that last day in his classroom, making him feel like the Grim Reaper, arriving to take away all of her youthful optimism. But at the same time he had refused (and still did refuse) to believe himself so important to her, specifically. It could have been anyone, he told himself, any person who had some insight into the world of teen angst could have helped her see how wrong she was in thinking she would never matter to anyone. It just so happened that he was the one who took the job.  
  
As he thought this, he held the envelope in both hands, took one last look at the name scrawled across in a moment of recklessness, and tossed it onto the back seat. But as he turned back to the steering wheel and reached for the keys in the ignition, his eyes caught the blurred image of a figure standing before him. He looked up to see Grace staring at him from the door of the biology lab, her face pale, her eyes red with anger. He took his hand off the ignition and swallowed. 


	11. grace and dimitri

Grace stood outside of the classroom and stared at the car in front of her, waiting for the image to blur into the sight of someone else's car with someone other than Mr. Dimitri sitting inside, as it often had. But when he got out of his car and started walking toward her, she began to panic. And when he ran his fingers through his hair, she couldn't deny it was him and started walking backwards, almost involuntarily, until she hit her head against the wall and grimaced in pain.  
  
He laughed nervously as he approached her. "Are you okay?" he asked, holding his hand to her. She refused it and looked away from him, nodding dizzily and trying to relax the muscles in her face from a look of horror into one of cool nonchalance; she had a feeling that it wasn't working. She felt his gaze on her face, and her cheek began to burn from force of habit, as if all of the chemical reactions her body had experienced in the time she'd known him had remained waiting just beneath her skin and could be instantly unleashed by a single glance.  
  
"So what are you doing here?" she asked in a small voice, trying to sound like she couldn't care less. He held out the envelope to her and tilted his head toward her face to try to read the look in her eyes. She flinched as a piece of his hair nearly touched her ear. She finally turned to face him when he pushed the envelope into her arms. He was smiling gently at her, like a Zen teacher who never said more than he needed to, just waited for her to react to his presence. "What is it?" she asked, the sweat on her palms moistening the paper. "You'll see," he said, "It's just something I found when I was cleaning out my old papers from school."  
  
"Oh," she said softly, closing her eyes for a moment to soften the familiar feeling of disappointment that flooded her every time he gave her something and she discovered it wasn't enough. He put a hand on her arm, just beneath her elbow as if he could see the pain he was causing her, and wanted to physically shield her from it.  
  
"I should have given it to you before I left but.I.I didn't.there was just so much that was happening." He grew silent and stared down at the ground, his hand dropping from her arm. A pale spider crawled past them in the space that divided their feet. Grace watched it too, feeling her heart lighten as he stumbled over his words. She suddenly felt sorry for him, as if realizing for the first time that she wasn't the only one who'd suffered over the loss of their friendship. She looked up at his face and waited for him to finish what he was saying, but he didn't say anything.  
  
In the sunlight she could clearly see the lines at the corners of his (beautiful) mouth, between his pale eyebrows. He looked older than she remembered, and the details of his face that she'd forgotten made her want so badly to touch him that she felt the center of her body fill with a heavy pain. She inhaled sharply and leaned against the wall of the classroom to keep from falling down. The sound of her breathing broke Dimitri's trance and he looked around the parking lot to make sure no one was watching them. "Are you.waiting for someone?" he asked, carefully searching the few nearby cars for Lily's SUV. Luckily it was still too early for the afternoon rush that took place after the final bell had rung. Grace shook her head.  
  
"No, my mom has a meeting today and Jessie's going to her mom's so I was just going to, um, I was just going to walk." She looked away from him as her voice grew smaller, remembering with humiliation the way she'd practically thrown herself into his car the day he'd first offered to drive her home. He smiled at her and turned toward the parking lot. Well, if you want, I can give you a ride." Grace's eyes widened. "Are you sure?" she asked, searching his face to see if he was serious. He laughed. "Do you mistrust my driving skills?" he asked in a mocking tone. She smiled and opened her backpack to stick the envelope inside. "No," she said, slinging the bag over her shoulder, "I trust you." 


	12. dimitri and grace

In the car, neither of them spoke. Grace fidgeted with her seatbelt and stared out the window while Dimitri hummed a Bob Dylan tune Grace had heard once during a Gay-Straight Alliance meeting but no longer remembered. Finally, she had clenched her teeth for so long to keep them from chattering that her jaw ached and she had to say something.  
  
"Mr. Dimitri?" her head swarmed and she forgot what she was going to say.  
  
"Uh-huh" he replied casually, as if they'd been together every day for the past year, rather than awkwardly separated as a result of an embarrassing incident. Grace stared at his mouth to see if she could catch the slightest tremor in his lips or his chin, but saw none.  
  
"Never mind," she said.  
  
"Never say never," he mocked, "what is it?"  
  
"I forgot what I was going to say."  
  
"I see."  
  
"It's just---"  
  
He turned to face her, his eyes gleaming. His attention to her caught her off guard and she stopped to look at him, his eyes drawing her in as if they were tiny aquariums. The mischief behind them reminded her of their days alone together and for a moment made her so unreasonably happy that she forgot what it was that was bothering her.  
  
"It's just what?" he asked softly.  
  
"Nothing," she smiled into her lap.  
  
"Nothing comes of nothing," he said.  
  
Grace laughed. "Have you noticed how often you quote Shakespeare?" she asked. He smiled at her warmly again. "Actually, this may shock you, but-" he paused to make a serious face.  
  
"But what?" she asked, biting her lip to keep from grinning.  
  
"Shakespeare has been quoting me all along."  
  
Grace laughed. "Is that right?"  
  
"I'm afraid so."  
  
"And you've never received any royalties?" "Not once."  
  
"That's so unjust."  
  
He gave a short laugh then grew quiet. His smile faded into a knowing look. "Many things are," he said softly. He took his hand off of the steering wheel and moved it downward. Grace felt her heart stop. She lifted her hand from her lap and moved it toward his, but just as she was about to touch his palm, he put his hand on the gear shift. Mortified, she snatched her hand away, hoping he hadn't noticed.  
  
Grace felt the light giddiness from before leave her as the reality of their situation set in again. As they approached her house, she began to panic at the thought of her mother and the last warning she'd given Grace. The tenderness she'd felt for him just a moment ago gave way to a burning anger. Why couldn't he make up his mind one way or the other? She turned her back to him and said, "You can just drop me off right here."  
  
"Are you sure?"  
  
"Yeah, it's fine."  
  
"But isn't your house--?"  
  
"Yeah," she nearly yelled, raising her voice to drown out his, "But it's just better this way."  
  
"Okay," he said quietly, "no problem."  
  
"Thanks."  
  
When the car came to a stop, Grace grabbed her backpack and slowly moved her hand to the door handle, wondering what she should say to him. Just as she opened the door, she felt his hand on her arm. "Grace" he barely whispered. She paused. She thought of pretending that she didn't hear him but she couldn't bear not knowing what he would say. She turned to him. He was leaning toward her so that his hair fell in front of his face. She held her breath. "What?"  
  
"I got your letter."  
  
"I know," she said, embarrassed, "I mean, I figured." She played with a loose strand of hair. "It's just.it wasn't a real letter.I only wanted to--- " She couldn't think of the words. "I just thought---I saw that you were going to be reading your poetry. And I just thought we could-" She gave up and leaned back in her seat. "I just---I can't.write anymore." As soon as she said this, she instantly regretted it.  
  
"I can't-you know I can't help you with your story"  
  
"I know."  
  
"No, I mean, what I mean is that you don't need my help-" he insisted.  
  
"No, I do, I need your help," she said, her voice nearly breaking.  
  
"You only think you do."  
  
"Okay."  
  
They sat in silence for several minutes, both of them feigning interest in the scenery outside. Finally, Dimitri opened his mouth again, "But I am sorry."  
  
She stared at him expectantly. She could see him searching for exactly the right words.  
  
"I'm sorry I wasn't a true."  
  
Grace tried to stop her mind from completing his sentences but it was hopeless. A true love, she thought, no--he would never say that.a true friend? They weren't friends. A true lover, maybe? At this thought she had to bite down on her lip to keep from laughing. Dimitri let out a long sigh. "I wasn't a true teacher to you," he finally said.  
  
"What do you mean?" she asked. "You know that's not true." She laughed incredulously.  
  
"Yes it is," he said. "A real teacher wouldn't have left."  
  
His eyes looked so softly lit, like candles in a church, that she almost leaned in to kiss him again. Instead she put her hand on his. "You were more than a teacher," she whispered.  
  
He smiled and leaned toward her. She closed her eyes, listening to the sound of his breath the way she used to listen to the ocean by holding a shell to her ear. His forehead touched hers, his hair falling against her cheek. He touched her ear lobe with his lips, "I missed you," he whispered.  
  
"Why?" she asked, not knowing what she was saying.  
  
He laughed gently and kissed her on the neck, just beneath her jaw. The sound of a horn woke them and they jumped apart. Panicking, Grace looked up, expecting to see Lily. But it was only a guy in a pickup truck picking up his friend a couple of houses down. She put a hand to her forehead, waiting for her heart beat to return to normal.  
  
"I better go," she said to her feet, not daring to look at him.  
  
He breathed in. "Yes." She waited for him to say something more but he was silent. She opened the door and began to climb out. As she was about to close the door from outside, he put his hand up to stop her. "Grace," he said.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Be sure to read what's in the envelope."  
  
"Okay," she said, hardly listening. She swung the door shut and started walking up the street to her house. The ground in front of her looked surreal, as if it might open at any moment and suck her in. She smiled to herself, her body still warm from its proximity to his. She wanted to set her backpack on the ground, lie down on the grass and fall asleep. He could leave a thousand times now, she thought, and I wouldn't care. 


	13. chapter 12 redux

Mr. Dimitri drove as if he were a chauffeur. Grace allowed herself to casually glance at him in one-and-a-half minute intervals so as not to seem over-eager. But each time his posture, his facial expression, his aura remained the same. After a few minutes, he finally stuck a tape into his ancient car stereo and pushed one of the knob-less buttons over and over until the tape began to play. The clicking of the knob was the only noise that broke the tension between them but it made the pain in Grace's head throb with an unbearable intensity.  
  
She decided to calm herself down by practicing for tomorrow's Spanish exam in her mind. "Yo estoy lista para el examen de la clase del español." she thought, "Yo voy a estudiar para el examen porque yo soy una estudiante." "No puedo estudiar porque estoy en el auto de Senor Dimitri" She glanced at him, watched the barely perceptible movement of his jaw as he swallowed. "Senor Dimitri es mi." Her mind began to swim and the words drifted off in opposite directions like toy boats. "Senor Dimitri es." She frantically searched her mind like someone rifling through a purse in search of her keys.  
  
She couldn't remember the word for teacher."Senor Dimitri es." but it then occurred to her that he wasn't really her teacher anymore. She didn't know what he was, she'd never known. Ordinarily, mentally reviewing class-work helped ease the feeling of guilt at the bottom of her stomach which punctuated every thrill she felt when she imagined touching his shoulders with her finger tips, or pictured him putting a hand on the back of her neck and pulling her into a kiss.  
  
But now it just made her feel more trapped by reminding her that she was still a high school student. Sometimes she felt like the role of student was the only role she really knew how to play, and that despite everything, Mr. Dimitri would never fully allow himself to see her as anything else-not even after she left school, because then he'd have to decide what she really was to him, and despite what he'd told her about being brave, she suspected that he'd never fully be able to admit to himself that she was anything to him at all.  
  
"God I love this" Dimitri said."Her voice..it's just so..so..passionate and melancholy. Don't you think?"  
  
Grace turned to him expectantly, still half-lost in her thoughts. "Mr. Dimitri" she said, staring at his boyish face, searching for the small hint of mischief in his eyes.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"Can I ask you something?"  
  
"You just did," he said, laughing at his own weak joke.  
  
"What are you doing?"  
  
"What am I doing?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"What do you mean? I'm driving you home."  
  
"You know what I mean."  
  
"I don't think I do."  
  
She sighed angrily."I mean, why did you come to school today?"  
  
"Oh, that."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"I already told you why, Grace."  
  
Grace rolled her eyes, she could feel her face reddening in anger.  
  
"You could have just mailed the envelope." She said, raising her voice. "Why did you come to school?"  
  
"You know," Mr. Dimitri said, ignoring her, "I never get tired of Linda Ronstadt, I don't understand people who think this type of music is dated."  
  
"Mr. Dimitri."  
  
"You know who I think you'd also love? Carole King. Did I ever loan you my copy of Tapestry? "  
  
"Mr. Dimitri."  
  
"It's a classic."  
  
"Mr. Dimitri!"  
  
"You know, you don't have to call me that, anymore, Grace, I'm not your teacher."  
  
She turned her back to him, stung. "I know you're not."  
  
He turned to her and, realizing he'd hurt her, reached out to touch her shoulder but then changed his mind and returned his hand to his lap. "So just call me August, okay?" he said softly, touched by her anger.  
  
"Okay," she mumbled, softened by the hint of affection in his tone.  
  
As they approached her house, she laid her head against the window, suddenly wishing she was far away from him again. That way she could make him say whatever she wanted in her mind, and she would actually feel closer to him than she did now, sitting next to him in the car as he hummed to the radio and tapped on the steering wheel, as if he were by himself, as if her presence were completely ordinary. She was so consumed by her feelings of disappointment that she didn't even notice when he pulled over and stopped the car.  
  
"Grace," she heard him say. She looked up expecting to see her street but saw instead that they weren't even in her neighborhood.  
  
"Where are we?" She asked.  
  
"Down the street from my house."  
  
She stared at him, startled. "Why?" They sat together in silence for several seconds before he answered.  
  
"Why did you write me that letter, Grace?" he asked, almost whispering.  
  
She looked at his mouth, too embarrassed to meet his eyes. "Oh, um I.don't know, I couldn't sleep" she mumbled.  
  
"But what were you trying to tell me?"  
  
"I don't know," she could feel herself losing resolve. She dreaded bursting into tears in front of him again, proving to him that she was too inexperienced, too weak for him. She swallowed hard and looked straight at him, "Why did you come to school today?"  
  
He sighed, frustrated. He put one hand in his hair and leaned against the door. "Because. Because I missed you."  
  
She was stunned into silence. It was not the answer she had expected. "You did?"  
  
He turned to face her, his face softening into a smile. "Yes," he said, "I did."  
  
She laughed nervously. "Oh."  
  
Her laugh made him laugh, too, softly, as he carefully placed his hand on top of hers.  
  
"Why?" she asked, trying to stop her fingers from trembling beneath his.  
  
He thought about it for a while, his brow furrowed in concentration. "Because."  
  
She listened eagerly, shifting in her seat.  
  
"Because you spoiled me."  
  
She looked up at him questioningly. "What do you mean?"  
  
"I just.I got used to having you around.and.I forgot how rare it is."  
  
"What is?" she asked, afraid to breath.  
  
"Knowing someone like you," he said, touching her hair as she closed her eyes and leaned into his hand.  
  
"So what took you so long?" she whispered.  
  
He laughed quietly. "I wasn't sure you would ever want to see me again."  
  
"Oh."  
  
He moved his hand to her jaw, and stroked her cheek with his fingers. "Listen, Grace" he said solemnly.  
  
"What?"  
  
"This doesn't mean.that things are going to change..right now"  
  
"Oh, I know." She said, although they both knew she didn't.  
  
"I mean, it's not that I don't want them to..but the thing is.." he tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. "The thing is.I don't regret leaving."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"I wanted to do what was best for you."  
  
"I know."  
  
"But I wasn't fair to you either."  
  
"You weren't?"  
  
"No." he swallowed. "It wasn't right to just disappear.that's not what I wanted to teach you."  
  
"I know that."  
  
"The last thing I want, Grace, is for you to spend your life as a ghost."  
  
"I know," she said softly, "I don't want you to be a ghost, either."  
  
"I know." He smiled and leaned into her, "Thank you."  
  
She smiled, stared at his lips. "No problem."  
  
He stroked her cheek again. "I wanted you to be real, Grace," he whispered, "And you were.you are. But I didn't do the same for you."  
  
She leaned closer to him, unable to resist the temptation of touching his hair. "Yes you did, Mr. Dimitri" she said, "you were always real to me."  
  
"Grace," he said laughing, "I told you not to call me Mr. Dimitri." He leaned in and kissed her mouth. "It makes me feel like I'm teaching second grade."  
  
She laughed, embarrassed. She looked down at her lap, "But..August is a month." she said. She started giggling, giddy with disbelief at what was happening to her.  
  
"Well thanks," he said, pretending to be offended. "At least my name isn't part of a famous hymn."  
  
At this, she began laughing harder, clutching her stomach. He grabbed her hand and kissed her again, hard. She kissed him back as her laughter subsided. She leaned further into him and felt herself forgetting whose body she was in; for once, it didn't matter. 


End file.
